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Chris Hedges: ‘We Are In A Dangerous Time’

August 31, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
When we last interviewed Chris Hedges in December, we spoke about the coming uprising and whether the left was ready for it. Now we are in the midst of a nationwide rebellion against police violence and lack of protection for workers, right wing violence is on the rise and an election is nearing. We speak to Hedges about the ways the liberal class protects the status quo, his experiences studying the Christian Right and the times in which we live. Hedges covered wars and revolutions in Latin America, the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia so he has seen what the United States is currently experiencing.

Walking The Tightrope: Latin America’s Pink Tide

August 22, 2020 By: Frederick B. Mills, New Politics. , , , , , , ,
Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings, edited by economic historian and prominent Latin Americanist Steve Ellner, offers a critical ethical theoretical framework for assessing the performance of left and left-of-center governments in Latin America during the Pink Tide. The “Pink Tide” refers to the wave of progressive governments beginning with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. These progressive governments provided alternatives to the neoliberal economic model that had brought growing economic and social inequality, austerity, privatization of public resources, and political subordination to Washington to most of the region during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Pink Tide governments were brought to power by widespread disillusion with traditional political parties and were buoyed by social movements that sought economic and social justice and more democratic participation in the political life of their nations.

Haiti: Tremors Herald The Collapse Of The Moïse Regime

August 13, 2020 ELAPRE (Struggle and Action for the Revolution), Marxist.com. , , ,
Haiti’s economic and social situation has been steadily worsening since Jovenel Moïse came to power. It is a real descent into hell, planned by the tiny minority of bourgeois families as the holders of the majority of the country’s wealth. These include the Apaid, Boulos, Bigio, Mevs, Abdallah, Deep, Brandt, Braun, and Accra families. To generate large amounts of money, these bourgeois families occasionally employ the mafioso and abominable machine of exploitation, theft and corruption. These bosses were the main backers of Jovenel Moïse during his 2016 election campaign to become the holder of the executive power in the country.

New Alternative Left Alliance Forms In Venezuela

August 11, 2020 Paul Dobson, Venezuelanalysis. , , ,
Merida - Two major Venezuelan left-wing parties have announced that they will not be backing government candidates in the upcoming December 6 parliamentary elections. For the first time, the Homeland for All Party (PPT) and Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) are set to lead a broad alternative coalition for the 277 seats up for grabs. Apart from the two parties, the inaugural Popular Revolutionary Alternative(APR) will look to incorporate trade unions, social movements, LGBTIQ groups, communes and campesinos organisations, as well as a range of smaller leftist currents.

Become A Socialist With This CEO Pay Calculator

August 11, 2020 By Joel Cunningham, Life Hacker.  , , ,
You’ve probably heard, anecdotally, that Jeff Bezos earns your salary in some absurdly short amount of time—but do you know exactly how short? Well, now there’s a tech CEO salary calculator from SimpleTexting that can give you the infuriatingly precise answer. You can also use it to figure out how quickly Elon Musk could pay off your mortgage, or that Mark Zuckerberg could pay off the average American’s $35,359 in student debt in 8 1/2 minutes. Does Jeff Bezos make enough to cover your living expenses in more or less time than it would take you to pledge yourself to the fight to burn capitalism to the ground?

How Socialists Won Our Democratic Rights

August 10, 2020 Adam J. Sacks, Tribune Magazine. , , ,
The myth of modern democracy is that it was handed down from on-high. In fact, the ruling class resisted extending the franchise at every turn – and it was socialists who fought them for the right to vote. Since the advent of the modern state, ruling classes have tried to restrain the voting power of workers and those not “well-born.” Contrary to the mainstream story that capitalism naturally gave rise to democracy, establishment powers in nineteenth-century Europe restricted the vote for as long as they possibly could. Only when faced with mass mobilization — or when continent-wide war wiped out working-class males en masse — was it clear that the franchise could no longer be withheld.

Neoliberal Centrists And The American Left

August 9, 2020 Rob Urie, Counterpunch. , , ,
The rapid end to the electoral fortunes of the Anglo-American left in 2020 was engineered by radical centrists for the benefit of capital. What was banished, in addition to vibrant and informed opposition to an atrophied political class, was the prospect of Federal government programs that are both desired and needed by the American people. Even if the agents of atrophy get it together in coming weeks to toss a few crumbs to those economically displaced by the pandemic, current woes arrived decades into engineered economic decline.

Letter To The Socialists, Old And New

August 9, 2020 Chris Townsend, Regeneration Magazine. , ,
I joined the labor movement 41 years ago. I had enrolled in the socialist movement two years before that. When I started out my links to the rest of the socialist movement were few; there were dwindling handfuls of people who identified publicly as “socialists.” The U.S. Mail and shortwave radio were my links to the bigger movement out there in the world. What remained of the socialist movement was rapidly decelerating and fissuring after the big 1960’s radicalization had run its course. Even in these inopportune conditions I managed to climb aboard and find my places in both the labor and socialist movements.

Document Exposes US Plot To Overthrow Nicaragua’s Elected Government

August 6, 2020 Ben Norton, The Grayzone. , , ,
A newly released document exposes a US government operation to overthrow the democratically elected socialist government in Nicaragua. The plot is administered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a regime-change vehicle that uses the pretense of “humanitarian aid” to advance Washington’s aggressive foreign-policy interests. The document (PDF) details the creation of a new “task order” called Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) and its plan for “Nicaragua’s transition to democracy”...

UK Labour Party Teeters On Brink Of Civil War

July 30, 2020 Jonathan Cook. , , ,
Jeremy Corbyn, the former left-wing leader of Britain’s Labour party, is once again making headlines over an “antisemitism problem” he supposedly oversaw during his five years at the head of the party. This time, however, the assault on his reputation is being led not by the usual suspects – pro-Israel lobbyists and a billionaire-owned media – but by Keir Starmer, the man who succeeded him.  Since becoming Labour leader in April, Starmer has helped to bolster the evidence-free narrative of a party plagued by antisemitism under Corbyn.

Terms Frequently Used To Describe Capitalism Don’t Hold Up Under Scrutiny

July 29, 2020 Richard D. Wolff, Economy for All. , , ,
Capitalism is not, as its defenders like to claim, defined by “free” or “private” enterprises. Likewise, “free” or “unregulated” markets do not define capitalism. Politics and ideology drive its defenders to choose those definitions over clearly better, different definitions. The causes and consequences of conflicts over definition are part of today’s mounting battles over capitalism. The task of any definition is to separate its object from others, to expose its uniqueness so all can recognize it and distinguish it from other, similar objects. We define “dog” to differentiate it from other animals, “chair” from other furniture, and “Mary” from other people. We should then define capitalism to differentiate it from other economic systems (the organized production and distribution of goods and services in a community) around qualities unique to it.

Cuba Defeated The Pandemic, Is Preparing To Face The Economic Crisis

July 24, 2020 By Arleen Rodríguez Derivet, Resumen English. , , ,
Possibly no other country in the world has it worse when it comes to facing what Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel has defined as the very challenging global economic scenario, after the impact of a pandemic that in the first six months of the year put almost all economies on hold and is still slowing down the most dynamic productive, financial and commercial processes on a planetary level. But surely no one else, among the small states of this unbalanced and unjust world, is in a better position to attempt another giant leap from uncertainty to risk.

Nicaragua: The Revolution Won’t Be Stopped

July 17, 2020 Nica Notes, AFGJ. , , ,
2019 was an amazing year in the search for peace in Nicaragua with The Amnesty Law and the promotion of reconciliation between neighbors in every corner of the nation. It was a year of life-giving advances in all aspects of wellbeing: poverty reduction, health, education, gender equity, recreation, culture and infrastructure; strengthened food security, and a new highway that joins Bluefields to the rest of the nation making the first paved transit route from the Caribbean to the Pacific. And all this despite cruel US unconventional warfare against the Sandinistas that has gone on for decades and reached a peak in April 2018. 2019 was a year of rebuilding lives as well as the economy after the 2018 violence.

CoronaShock And Socialism

July 14, 2020 Vijay Prashad, TriContinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , , ,
CoronaShock is a term that refers to how a virus struck the world with such gripping force; it refers to how the social order in the bourgeois state crumbled, while the social order in the socialist parts of the world appeared more resilient. This is the third in a multiple-part series of studies on CoronaShock. It is based on research by Ana Maldonado (Frente Francisco de Miranda, Venezuela), Manolo de los Santos (researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), Subin Dennis (researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), and Vijay Prashad (director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research). Friedrich Engels once said: ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism’. What does ‘regression into barbarism’ mean to our lofty European civilisation? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness.

Green Party Nominates Two Workers For The White House

July 13, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
The Green Party of the United States held its presidential nominating convention, a virtual convention, this past weekend. The nominees are Howie Hawkins, a co-founder of the party and the first candidate to bring the Green New Deal to the US, for president and Angela Walker for vice president. Both are members of the working class - a retired Teamster and a truckdriver. Both are also lifelong socialists who are working to build the Green Patry and build unity among the Left in the US. We speak with Howie and Angela about the times in which we live, why they are running and what they hope to accomplish through their campaign.
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Keep independent media alive. 

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